When a parent’s mental health struggle affects their kids
The Washington Post, July 21, 2022
When a parent’s mental health struggle affects their kids
Researchers like Jessica Borelli, a clinical psychologist and associate professor of psychological science at the University of California, Irvine, are trying to decipher exactly what all of this means for parents and children who are carrying the trauma of the past two years. In her work so far, which has included a national survey of parents conducted in the first few months of the pandemic, she has found that parents who reported higher levels of mental health symptoms often had children who were experiencing the same: “The more covid impacted parents’ lives, the more a parent’s mental health was adversely affected,” she says, “which in turn impacted their children’s mental health.”